The news reported that it was “spontaneous,” of course. “Just one of those inexplicable things.” They didn’t know the truth. That someone had it in for the Moulin Rouge. That someone had been stalking the entertainers for months. Not just outside the cabaret, but also appraising them inside…almost every night (I honestly don’t know how he could afford to attend so regularly). Sizing the various performers up and staring daggers at them, I watched this man’s odd behavior for two months without saying anything. After all, I was just a kitchen apprentice. They were never going to listen to me. Sacré bleu, I was lucky if they ever even noticed me at all. It’s not as though I left the kitchen much. I wasn’t a server, just a preparer. A glorified dishwasher with some food styling responsibilities thrown in. Why would anyone pay attention to what I had to say? 

And yet, during those minutes when I would take my break, I couldn’t help but always notice this seedy character. This grizzled man who never took his trench coat off (never trust a man who wears a trench coat, let alone one who wears it like it’s his complete ensemble). Why was he always there, posted up in the same exact table all to himself? It wasn’t normal, kosher, sound. Mind you, I’m all for “weird,” but this was the objectively bad kind. Whatever he was doing, it most definitely went beyond mere “appreciation” for the show. No, no—there was something more than slightly “off” about Mr. Trench, and I was going to have to figure out exactly what for myself. That meant fighting fire with fire, as it is said. In other words, I was going to have to start stalking the stalker. 

Anyone who tells you stalking is easy has clearly never done it. Oh sure, the movies make it look like a cinch, but, in all honesty, it’s so easy to be spotted. And yeah, the movies can also make it seem like, no matter how “zanily” you stalk, you still won’t get caught—that’s a bald-faced lie too. Because when you don’t have inherent stalker tendencies, of course your method is going to come across as especially zany. Utterly attention-grabbing. Plus, with Mr. Trench being a seasoned (as far as I could tell) stalker, it was only to be expected that he would notice me flailing along behind him. Obviously, I hadn’t kept my distance discreetly enough and he must have been overcome with that unshakeable feeling everyone gets when they can sense they’re being…followed. A polite word, I’m now realizing, for stalked.

It was only a matter of minutes before he shook me off his tail, not bothering to do something super creepy like whip around and stare me directly in the face. Maybe he knew it would unnerve me more this way. For him to make me, without words or direct acknowledgement of any kind, understand that I was total child’s play as far as he was concerned. That I could try to stalk him back all I wanted and it would come to nothing, because he would always outrun me. A gifted stalker knows all the tricks to evade a barely amateur one. Which is precisely what he did on those first three nights when I made my attempts to follow him and see who he was, what hole he had crawled out of. 

I bet he thought he was endlessly clever, and truly free of me. But by night four, I had cracked the code on how to stalk him. Which was, in effect, not stalking him at all. Because the “tactic” involved was me staying put. Not bothering to leave Moulin Rouge when I was meant to, for I had this sneaking suspicion that he might try to come back after hours. Call it a “sixth sense,” “an intuition,” “a hunch.” Whatever the reason, I just knew in my bones that he was going to be back later, once he thought everyone had left. I couldn’t believe just how right I was when, after hiding in the kitchen until my other co-workers had left, I heard, unmistakably, a strange scratching noise overhead. More than just scratching—a horrendous scraping. One that didn’t cease for minutes on end until, suddenly, it was dead quiet…for all of about ten seconds. That was when the thunderous crashing of the two (or four, depending on how one chooses to divide it in their mind) blades landed on the sidewalk below. It was a noise unlike any I had ever heard, and I reckon only myself and Mr. Trench were the ones to hear it in all its wood and metal-flaying glory. Everyone else on the boulevard was in such a deep sleep at that time of night, évidemment, that not even this banshee-out-of-hell noise could awaken them from their stupefied slumber. 

The instant I heard the final result of all that tinkering above me, I finally put together what Mr. Trench had been doing all those weeks: reconnaissance. He wasn’t only there to judge and sinisterly appraise the performers, he was also there to determine when the checks were done on the blades, and how frequently. Making sure that the system for “maintenance” never deviated before he made his grand move during the final week of stalking. So it was that, I found out, Mr. Trench was able to discover the exact right time to go about his five-day long “unraveling” of the blades. For he realized that Moulin Rouge’s technical team (yes, we have a technical team) only checks the “mechanism” once every week. This, clearly, giving him enough days to gradually loosen it up bit by bit until at last knocking its proverbial block off without them detecting the issue in time. Rightly never imagining that anyone would do such a senseless, conniving thing. Not that they would ever find out the truth… No, that alone would be reserved for me. 

After overcoming my initial shock, I ran outside to confirm what I already knew to be true: the Moulin Rouge had become the Moulin Dénudé. What was this place without its signature blades up top? Before I could wallow too much in my own mourning, I understood that I needed to apprehend Mr. Trench and call the police. Because if I let Mr. Trench go, I would never forgive myself. Not just because the Moulin Rouge deserved justice for what was done to it, but because I needed to know…why. Why would he do this? What possible jollies could he have gotten out of it? When I finally caught up to him, jumped on his back and pinned him to the ground, he confessed not only how he did it, but also threw in an explanation for his so-called motive. 

He spit in my face as he declared, “I hate women. And I hate any form of debauchery. That’s exactly what this den of filth represents.” 

And as I was thinking to myself, Okay then, so you’re totally unhinged, I lost my grip on the bastard and he not only managed to hurl me off him, but ended up overpowering me long enough to whip a knife out of his handy, pocket-filled trench coat and stab me multiple times in the stomach. 

I didn’t want to admit it to myself at first, but there’s no denying the stab wounds are fatal and, seeing as how there’s no one around this time of late night/early morning, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get help in time. I’m ruing the day I didn’t try to speak up about this connard when I noticed him so many weeks ago, that I doubted my own sense of self-worth enough to not say something. To warn them. And now, I don’t think they’ll ever find out the truth. Not with the only witness to the crime about to expire. If anything, they’ll probably end up blaming me, and that’s what my legacy will become in the wake of my death: iconic windmill destroyer. I’ll have no way of stopping it. No way of letting the truth be known.

I’m starting to believe that the old saying about the truth setting you free has some fine print to it: yeah, you’ll be set free…right into the next otherworldly realm for having let curiosity kill you. Sure, I might be mixing adages, but you’ll forgive a dying kitchen worker, surely. And here I was just about to be trusted to garnish the chef’s coq au vin for the next show. Career potential, I hardly knew ye.